25 Hot Israeli Tech Startups

Interlude is the only company on this list with the distinction of having been founded by a rock star, Israeli musician Yoni Bloch. Bloch is modest enough to point out that “Israel is a small country” and his music has not become popular elsewhere. But there’s no downplaying the reach of his interactive video platform, Interlude. The platform, which makes online videos work a bit like a choose-your-own-adventure novel, started as a novel approach for making music videos. Now it has brands and advertisers excited about the possibilities for increased user engagement and retention. A number of multinationals, including Microsoft, Shell and Revlon, to name a few, are already using Interlude. The company has raised more than $20 million from Sequoia, Intel Capital and others.

StoreDot

StoreDot is a nanotechnology startup that is exploring applications for a substance it has discovered that it calls Nanodots. The firm, based in Ramat Gan, Israel, is currently using a $10 million investment from Millhouse to explore two commercial applications of the material. One is a smartphone screen that doesn’t use toxic minerals such as cadmium. The other (and this is the one that will have all compulsive phone users salivating) is a mobile phone battery that fully charges in a couple of minutes. No date has been set for these products to come to market, but they have the potential to become big sellers to customers including Apple and Samsung.

Tipalti

Founded in 2010, Tipalti has become one of the leading payment service providers to companies, such as online ad networks, that make hundreds or thousands of payments a day to payees around the world. Managing these massive payments in-house could be a nightmare, but Tipalti takes care of every aspect of the transaction, including currency exchange and compliance with tax laws and other regulations. So far, the company has handled more than $1 billion dollars of payments and has raised about $3 million of funding from investors including Oren Zeev, a lead investor in Chegg and Audible.

Telesofia

One of the most vexing and persistent problems of healthcare is that patients don’t do what they’re told. Telesofia, founded by Israeli doctors and tech innovators, seeks to change that. Its personalized instructional videos are meant to translate a doctor’s or pharmacist’s order into easy to digest steps that almost everyone will be able to follow. Telesofia, which has raised $1.5 million and had a series A round open as of May, uses a bank of clips and graphics to put together customized videos, controlled by medical providers, that are targeted to specific demographics, conditions and medications. The result is instructions that include everything a patient needs to know and nothing he doesn’t. The videos can be viewed on any device from a smartphone to a television.

Hello Doctor

An iOS app, Hello Doctor is a simple interface that enables users to organize and annotate all of their medical records in one space. It’s an elegant solution for a common problem faced by people with extensive medical histories or serious diseases. Many wind up carrying around dense, poorly organized binders and records are often lost. With Hello Doctor, users can carry all of their records in an iPad and have them ready on demand during a visit to the doctor. Founded by Maayan Cohen in Israel, the company is currently backed by a number of angels including John Malloy of BlueRun Ventures.

Takipi

Debugging servers can be a tedious task for developers. Takipi’s SaaS product aims to save the frustration (and hours) required to track down bugs by using a cloud-based analytical tool to find bad code on its own. The product can also detect bugs in code before they become apparent. The company closed a $4.5 million round with Menlo Ventures in December.

Everything.Me

A new entrant in the popular category of “launcher” apps for Android, Everything.Me aims to one-up the competition with personalization. In the first days you have the app installed, it learns about which apps you use at certain times of day and in certain places. Then it starts showing those apps on the home screen when you are in the places (and at the times of day) it expects you to use them. So, when you wake up it might show you the weather app. Once you get to work, you’ll see Google Drive. Out shopping, Around Me will appear. In 2011 and 2012, the Tel-Aviv-based company raised more than $35 million from angels and VCs.

Mobile OCT

Mobile OCT is a social venture that aims to bring low-cost medical diagnosis tools to the developing world. The company is founded on the insight that far more people—especially in poor countries—have access to mobile technology than to doctors. Mobile OCT plans to leverage that imbalance to use mobile devices to deliver health care. The company’s first project is a mobile colposcope that attaches to a smartphone and uses the phone as the CPU. A colposcope is a device that can detect cervical cancer with specialized photographic methods. According to Mobile OCT, 250,000 women die every year of treatable cervical cancer simply because they aren’t diagnosed. So far, the company has raised $225,000. It’s looking for another $25,000 on Indiegogo.

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